Apple denied it has been hacked after a gang of hackers tried to blackmail it for $100,000

Apple CEO Tim Cook. AP Apple has denied that it has been hacked after a group of hackers attempted to blackmail the company into paying $100,000 (£79,000) in return for the deletion of what they claimed was customers' login information.

Motherboard reported on Tuesday that a hacker group calling itself "Turkish Crime Family" claimed to have contacted Apple over the login information of 300 million iCloud accounts.

The hackers reportedly published a video on YouTube showing that they had the ability to remotely wipe the iPhones belonging to people in the login information.

The hackers requested $75,000 (£59,000) in either Bitcoin or Ethereum from Apple, or $100,000 in iTunes gift cards in return for deleting the data, Motherboard reported.

The hacking group also shared with Motherboard what it claimed were emails between its members and Apple employees. "We firstly kindly request you to remove the video that you have uploaded on your YouTube channel as it's seeking unwanted attention," the email reportedly showed an Apple employee as saying. "Second of all we would like you to know that we do not reward cyber criminals for breaking the law."

Apple sent Business Insider the following statement in which it said that its services hadn't been hacked.

"There have not been any breaches in any of Apple's systems including iCloud and Apple ID. The alleged list of email addresses and passwords appears to have been obtained from previously compromised third-party services.

We're actively monitoring to prevent unauthorized access to user accounts and are working with law enforcement to identify the criminals involved. To protect against these type of attacks, we always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites and turn on two-factor authentication."

So where did the login information come from? Fortune suggests that the data may originate from the 2012 LinkedIn hack, which leaked login information for over 6 million people. That's nowhere near the claimed number of 300 million accounts, but it's possible that the extortionists were exaggerating the number of users affected.